For years, most African venture capital has flowed into the continent’s biggest startup ecosystems — Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa. Southern Africa’s smaller markets have largely been overlooked.
But according to Florence Bavanandan, general partner of the Botswana Tech Fund, that is exactly where the opportunity lies.
Bavanandan described the fund’s strategy as a “contrarian thesis” focused on backing startups in Botswana and neighbouring countries like Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
“Where everyone is not looking, that’s where the opportunity is,” she said.
The fund plans to invest in tech-first B2B startups solving infrastructure challenges around payments, ecommerce, logistics, and digitisation. Rather than competing directly in saturated markets, the thesis is built around helping startups scale across Southern Africa’s underserved economies.
One of the fund’s more unusual features is its dual strategy. Alongside a pre-seed accelerator programme, the fund will also deploy growth capital from seed to Series C, allowing it to continue backing its best-performing startups as they scale.
At the accelerator stage, startups will initially receive $25,000 to cover operating costs, with the potential to unlock another $75,000 after completing the programme and agreed milestones. The fund is targeting roughly 10% ownership in accelerator-stage companies.
Unlike many accelerators that focus heavily on training, Bavanandan said the Botswana Tech Fund wants to position itself as “investing first and accelerating second.”
Importantly, the fund says it is backing founders as much as products.
“At this super early stage, it’s all about the founder,” Bavanandan said, arguing that resilience, adaptability, and the ability to pivot matter more than perfect products.
The fund is also leaning heavily into AI-native businesses and infrastructure-focused startups. Bavanandan pointed to payments infrastructure and wallet-based financial systems as examples of the types of scalable businesses the fund hopes to support.
Beyond venture returns, the Botswana Tech Fund also has a conservation component. A portion of the fund’s carried interest will go toward the Tuli Conservation Trust, linking entrepreneurship and job creation to anti-poaching and tourism sustainability efforts in Botswana.
For Bavanandan, the broader goal is not simply to back startups, but to help build a regional innovation ecosystem capable of attracting more capital into Southern Africa over time.
“Africa doesn’t need another failed VC fund,” she said.
Startups can apply for the fund here.
